'Agent Carter' in action on ABC next week

ABC’s attempt to woo fans of the Marvel movies to TV with “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” hasn’t worked out all that well ratings-wise but the network will give it another go with a comparative Hail Mary, “Marvel’s Agent Carter” (8-10 p.m. Tuesday, WTAE), a superhero show without superheroes, starring a supporting player and set in the 1940s. Talk about having the deck stacked against success.

Regardless of ratings, “Agent Carter” is a welcome, interesting entry, a far cry from the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” large ensemble and a welcome opportunity to put a woman front and center. In addition, the 1940s production design is admirably detailed and deep, from costumes to computer-generated sets and backgrounds.

Essentially a spin-off of 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger,” the series begins with a wealth of flashbacks to the film where SSR Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) lost her love interest, Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, when he crashed a plane in the Arctic and presumably died.

It’s now 1946 and peacetime has not been kind to Peggy, who’s trying to find her place in a sexist New York. Despite her wartime triumphs, she’s marginalized at SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve), a forerunner to S.H.I.E.L.D., where co-worker Thompson (Chad Michael Murray, “One Tree Hill”) refers to her as “kid” and assigns her to do the filing. Only sensitive agent Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj, “Dollhouse”) stands up for Peggy, which she doesn’t entirely appreciate.

I’m more than capable of handling whatever these adolescents throw at me,” Peggy tells him. Regardless, Sousa is clearly the frontrunner to eventually replace Steve Rogers as Carter’s love interest.

In the first of two episodes airing Tuesday, the only hour ABC made available for review at deadline, Carter proves herself quite capable, engaging in multiple fights and deactivating an explosive device. Of course, she did none of this on the clock – she had to take a sick day away from the boys’ club at SSR to get the job done.

Her whirlwind sick day involved meeting up with fugitive Howard Stark (guest star Dominic Cooper from the first “Captain America” film), the industrialist father of Tony “Iron Man” Stark, who’s trying to collect all his “bad babies,” destructive gadgets stolen from his lab. Howard Stark enlists Carter to help him but Mr. Cooper is not a series regular so the first order of business is to introduce an intermediary, Stark’s butler, Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy, “Those Who Kill”).

This type of pseudo-recasting can often be clunky, but it actually works well here, particularly because Jarvis is married, which seems likely to preclude the possibility of romance between him and Carter despite an obvious chemistry. While they’re both Brits, she’s the adventurer and he’s the buttoned-down butler who’d rather be in bed by 9 p.m. and make a soufflé for his wife than engage in Carter’s derring-do. Jarvis brings to mind Giles from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” albeit more fuddy-duddy.

The camaraderie between Carter and Jarvis is the best part of the “Agent Carter” pilot because it allows for some amusing banter while she gets to be the hero and he’s the sidekick, a refreshing gender role reversal for superhero stories.

But to work over the long haul, “Agent Carter” will need to beef up its stock sexist characters and make them more human. Surely it must be possible to be a jerky SSR agent while still having some complexity but in the first hour, the sexist guys are merely straw men just waiting to be quickly proven wrong by the show’s leading lady.